Not the Greatest Show on Turf, but No Longer Playing Like the Worst

LAKE FOREST, Ill. — When Chicago Bears Coach Lovie Smith hired his former St. Louis Rams colleague Mike Martz as his offensive coordinator last February, two questions made the N.F.L. rounds. Could Martz, one of the game’s most creative offensive minds, reinvent the staid Monsters of the Midway as another pass-happy Greatest Show on Turf? And would the stubborn Martz clash with the talented yet petulant quarterback Jay Cutler?

The answers could not have been less predictable.

With the Bears hosting the Seattle Seahawks in an N.F.C. divisional playoff game on Sunday, a larger-than-usual crowd surrounded Martz for his weekly interview at the Walter Payton Center, the team’s practice facility, with a wood-framed roof high enough to hold a dirigible. He spoke about the development of the Bears’ offense, which hardly resembles a typical Martz production.

For the first time in Martz’s four N.F.L. stints as an offensive coordinator, his team dropped in the league offensive rankings based on yards a game. The Bears fell to 30th, the worst of all playoff teams, from 23rd last season under Ron Turner.

The players were slow to grasp Martz’s intricate system, the one that quarterback Kurt Warner and the St. Louis Rams rode to a Super Bowl title 11 years ago. And it took two months to sort out offensive line problems that left Cutler vulnerable. In a 17-3 loss to the Giants on Oct. 3, Cutler absorbed nine sacks in the first half, an N.F.L. record, before leaving with a concussion. The Bears allowed 31 of their league-leading 56 sacks in the first seven games.

“We just had to get better, piece by piece,” Martz said Wednesday. “It doesn’t come in big leaps, obviously, and they were very patient with it.”

After a late October bye week, the Bears regrouped to win five straight and seven of their last nine games. But by leaning more on running back Matt Forte, the Bears became one of the N.F.L.’s most-balanced offenses in the final nine weeks: 258 running plays and 276 passing.

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The Bears used the bye week to absorb the offense installed by Mike Martz. They’ve won 7 of 9 since then.Credit
Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

“It wasn’t just Jay, it’s just learning the offense,” center Olin Kreutz said. “Once we learned a little more of the details and what the coaches wanted out of us, that was the turning point. The bye week helped a lot. We just learned to how to execute the plays called better, handling the blitzes, handling different looks.”

The Bears can still score quickly; their average drive time was the league’s shortest: 3 minutes 2 seconds. But Cutler has not passed for 300 yards since Week 1. And the 11-5 Bears won the N.F.C. North by relying on defense and selective passing, rather than throwing the ball all over the place.

“I’m a little bit surprised, and I say that knowing Mike and his career,” said Warner, a two-time league most valuable player and an analyst for the NFL Network. “I know that when Mike left St. Louis, he tried to run the Greatest Show on Turf every place he went.

“One of the tendencies of a coordinator coming in is to say: ‘Here’s my offense. This is how I’ve done it; I’m going to do it here.’ But Mike made the adjustment. He’s trying to do what he needs to do to win, and that probably surprised a lot of people.”

Warner said he thrived in Martz’s timing-based system because it fit his style and vision. He saw things the way Martz did, which is imperative for a quarterback. Warner offered to talk to Cutler about playing for Martz. But after an initial exchange of text messages, they never spoke, Warner said.

Until this season, Cutler, a fifth-year player, had not been on a team with a winning record since high school. Last year, his first with Chicago after three in Denver, he led the league with 26 interceptions. Martz, then working for the NFL Network, criticized Cutler’s body language.

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“Guys are kind of like moving pieces, winding up in every position possible out there,” the Bears’ quarterback Jay Cutler said of Mike Martz’s offense.Credit
Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

But since the bye week, Cutler has had more good moments than bad, throwing four touchdown passes against the Philadelphia Eagles, and three each against the Minnesota Vikings and the Jets, all victories.

“Guys are kind of like moving pieces, winding up in every position possible out there,” Cutler said of Martz’s offense. “It’s totally different than anything I’ve been exposed to, and probably all the offensive guys in here. It’s not West Coast. It’s a little bit different.”

Martz demands a lot. Warner said a typical Martz game plan with the Rams contained about 200 pass plays, and he might change out 60 to 70 the next week.

“He’s going to challenge you,” Cutler said. “He’s going to show you a different way of seeing defenses and attacking defenses. He makes it fun to come to work every day, and that’s what it’s all about.”

Martz said: “The thing with Jay that I’ve found is, he’s so tough, and he can do so many things, that you have a tendency to do more than he’s really ready for. He’s still a young player. He’s just now hitting his prime. But he’s made terrific progress for what we do.”

So have the Bears. Their previous meeting with the Seahawks, a 23-20 loss on Oct. 17 at Soldier Field, was a fiasco. Seattle’s blitzing defense sacked Cutler six times in his first game back from the concussion. With Martz calling 47 pass plays and 12 runs, the Bears went 0 for 12 on third down and did not score an offensive touchdown after the opening drive.

“The whole offense, it wasn’t one of our better moments,” said tight end Greg Olsen, who also lines up at wideout or fullback in certain formations. “We’ve come a long way, Jay and everyone included.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 16, 2011, on page SP4 of the New York edition with the headline: Bears Aren’t Greatest Show on Turf, but They Aren’t Playing Like the Worst. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe